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Experience and level-up (Bonds of Blood)
The Bonds of Blood server has special rules covering the acquisition of experience points. Most notable may be the irrelevance of forming an official party. Special sources of non-combat experience also come into play and are required in order to advance in character level. Combat experience Experience points for defeating an enemy are awarded to all player characters within 30 meters, regardless of official "party" status. (Despite the irrelevance of party status, and despite the lag associated with large parties, the server recommends that players form official party anyways.) Only player characters are counted when determining the size of a player's side in the combat; unlike the party size penalty of the standard experience system, associates do not affect the size of experience point awards on Bonds of Blood. If a player wishes to gain good experience then they must fight creatures rated moderate, challenging, very difficult, overpowering, or impossible. Therefore the key to getting good experience is to always fight creatures at least the same level as the player. As far as experience awards go, the ideal number of player characters to have within the combat radius is four. If there are more than four player characters within the radius, then no one receives experience for that combat. (The server justifies this based on challenge ratings being calculated with the assumption that creatures are opposed by parties of four.) In addition, a "boss" creature will become temporarily invincible if fought by more than four players. If there are fewer than four player characters within the combat radius, then a penalty is applied to earned experience, with the penalty increasing as the number of player characters decreases. Furthermore, player characters must be of comparable level in order to gain experience from combat. If there is more than an eight-level difference between any two player characters within the combat radius, then no experience will be awarded. This range is based on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) not giving experience for defeating opponents whose challenge rating differs from a party's average level by more than eight. (There is a change from the D&D rule in that the D&D rule compares a party's average level to an opponent's level, whereas the server rule compares levels within a "party".) It is also intended to stop power-leveling to some extent. The server is designed with the assumption that a party of four will contain at least one healer and one fighter. The other two party members are assumed to consist of an archer/fighter, an archer/rogue, or a mage. Encounters are balanced around these assumptions. Non-combat experience There are several ways to gain non-combat experience, including unlocking, disarming, crafting items, identifying items (using an idem optical item), healing others (with a spell, while in combat), quests, and performing jobs for non-player characters. Opening locks and disarming traps only award experience points when done with skills (open lock and disable trap), and this award does not apply to traps set by players. Furthermore, the experience award is forfeited if the lock or trap had ever been subject to the knock or find traps spells (respectively). Jobs may include delivering goods, patrolling, whipping players, taxing players, making items, etc. Jobs are assigned through a conversation with the character for whom the job is done. The experience from jobs is only allowed for the first and last 20% of the experience points required for each level; the remaining 60% must be gained from other sources. A character must gain at least 5% of the experience for each level (50 x current level) from non-combat experience, excluding experience from identifying items. (The exclusion is due to a cheat.) The server uses this requirement (not all experience based on combat) to justify its identification as being not a pure action module. Level-up The anti-cheat scripts for the server were written before the 1.67 patch, so players should unequip all items that give ability or skill bonuses before initiating the level-up process. If a character ever loses a level, any gear that can no longer be used due to item level restrictions should be unequipped. Not doing so may render the character invalid after a logout. The familiar and animal companion selections during level-up have no meaning on this server. The standard mechanics have been disabled and replaced by the familiar and animal companion system from D&D 3.5. Experience incentives A character may receive bonus experience points (either +10% or +20%) upon resting, up to a maximum of 400 xp. These are based upon race and class, and they do not stack; only the highest is used. Racial bonuses are awarded to gnomes (+20%), half-orcs (+20%), and half-elves (+10%). Class bonuses are awarded to single-classed characters (+20%), and to characters who have at least half their levels in bard (+10%), fighter (+20%), monk (+20%), or ranger (+20%). Bonuses are also awarded to characters with at least one level in certain prestige classes, namely arcane archer (+20%), assassin (+10%), blackguard (+10%), dwarven defender (+20%), or shifter (+20%).